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WIRE Buzz: Pixar's Onward conjures featurette; The Vast of Night abducts trailer; more
If the chemistry between Tom Holland (Spider-Man: Far From Home) and Chris Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy) seems genuine in Pixar's Onward (out next month), that's because it is.
The two MCU actors are close friends in real life, and now they get to bond as a pair of animated elven brothers named Ian and Barley. You can see the two of them joking around in the recording booth in a brand-new featurette that goes behind the scenes of the suburban fantasy film.
Directed and co-written by Dan Scanlon (Monsters University), Onward takes place in a modern-day world of fantasy creatures like elves, gnomes, dragons, centaurs, and manticores. The days of wonder, however, are long in the rearview mirror as this universe — not unlike the one seen in Netflix's Bright — is pretty much like our own humdrum reality.
Ian and Barley set off on a quest to re-discover some leftover magic in an effort to bring back their late father for a day. Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Veep) voices the boys' mother, Laurel, while Octavia Spencer (Ma) lends her pipes to a restaurant-owning Manticore.
"[The movie is for] people when they think about their family history, or mysteries that they may have in their life," Scanlon, who was just a year old when his father passed away, said last summer.
Onward journeys into theaters everywhere Friday, March 6.
This one goes out to all the Project Blue Book fans out there. After premiering at the Toronto Film Fesitval to rave reviews, Andrew Patterson's directorial debut, The Vast of Night, will enjoy a rollout from Amazon.
Taking place in a small New Mexico town circa the 1950s, the movie follows a switchboard operator, Fay (Sierra McCormick), and a radio DJ, Everett (Jake Horowitz), who stumble upon a strange radio frequency that is most likely coming from a UFO hovering somewhere in the night sky. After all, the state of New Mexico is the birthplace of alien conspiracy theories.
Check out the new trailer below:
According to Amazon's official description, the movie was inspired by '50s-era classics like The Twilight Zone and was "photographed in soft, inky-dark tones and shot in nearly real time." Naturally, the heated Space Race and Cold War paranoia also play into the overarching story.
"The Vast of Night is all about execution. Its B-movie plot is so familiar that writers James Montague and Craig W. Sanger unabashedly frame the story as an episode of a TV show called Paradox Theater, an on-the-nose Twilight Zone imitation that’s the closest the film gets to nostalgia," wrote Variety's Amy Nicholson in her Toronto Fest review.
Gail Cronauer and Bruce Davis co-star.
Basically American Graffiti by way of Close Encounters, The Vast of Night will premiere in theaters and on Amazon Prime, although no dates for either have been confirmed yet.
Per Deadline, Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski — the writing team behind Sundance's The Night House — are teaming back up for another horror-based film, The Sisters of Samhain.
The plot is said to revolve around a group of friends trying to stop a coven of witches from bringing about the end of the world on Halloween night. "Samhain" is the original pagan festival that inspired Halloween in the first place.
The project is part of a collaboration with Fangoria, whose parent company — Cinestate — is handling the budget and distribution. Bloody Disgusting and Final Destination producers Practical Pictures and Grade A Entertainment are also on board. Gregg Bishop (Siren, Dance of the Dead), who developed the story with Practical and Grade A, is expected to direct.
Collins and Piotrowski have become a sought-after commodity since Searchlight Pictures scooped up The Night House at Sundance for $12 million.
"When you have a supernatural story, that promises the afterlife. That promise is that the existence of a demon kind of suggests the existence of a god, and there's a comfort in even the most terrifying horror conceits. So I think we wanted to play with the supernatural, but in a way that didn't give you that safety," Collins said at the festival.
